This is a fantastic accounting of how our government was allowed to grow so unconstitutionally powerful.
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A lot of conservatives seem to think President Obama spends too much time vacationing. That is the thrust of this illuminating graphical time-line from Grand Rants:
I can certainly understand why conservatives find this argument attractive. The President has demonstrated through his policies and speeches that he is out of touch with Americans. Pointing out his frequent vacations certainly enforces that narrative. But I think it also encourages an unhealthy attitude toward the presidency.
The idea that we expect a president to be on top of everything that happens across the entire country is something which one would expect to hear from the statist left, but not self-described individualists. I want a president less involved in the day-to-day affairs of most Americans. For the last century, our Presidents have gotten into the habit of responding to every little development, regardless of whether or not they have any legal or even moral authority on the matter. Even conservatives have become used to this state of affairs, and are now quick to denounce the White House for failing to quickly react to this or that matter that probably shouldn’t be the concern of a president in the first place.
The purpose of the executive branch is to enforce laws and command the armed forces. The President is Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief; he is not Nurturer-in-Chief, Therapist-in-Chief, Father-in-Chief or even Emergency Responder-in-Chief. If conservatives want to make progress in convincing the electorate that a massive welfare state is bad because it promotes an unhealthy dependency on government, we should start by showing how little we care whether or not President Obama is around to tell us how to react to every little social or economic problem that comes our way.
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Congressman Pete Stark informs us that the federal government is largely without limits:
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Last time I was in Time Square, I passed a couple people selling humorous Barack Obama condoms on a street corner. I was amused and proud of everything represented by this simple act of commerce: freedom, expression, and capitalism. I am sad to learn now that those same individuals might be the ones in this case, who have just been harassed by the government because they don’t have proper vendor licenses.
The defendants argued that their product was a form of speech, and therefore should be protected by the first amendment. This should have been a compelling argument, as I find it doubtful that most of their tourist customers purchased the condoms for actual use. The judge felt differently, “holding that the novelty prophylactics constituted commercial speech, not constitutionally protected persuasive speech.”
While hardly the most outrageous instance of license enforcement, this case is just another in a long line of examples showing how such laws are antithetical to a free society. They prevent people the right to pursue the occupation of their choice, place undue burdens on many entrepreneurs, and even serve as a basis to limit free speech.
Licensing laws are one of the many ways in which the nanny state purports to protect us from ourselves. What usually happens, however, is that such laws are used as a means to protect a cartel and drive up the price of labor (doctors, lawyers, etc.), or as an abusive revenue source for the government, like in the case of little Julie Murphy, the 7-year-old girl who was recently harassed because she didn’t have a license for her lemonade stand.
What’s worse is the number of completely harmless occupations which the government licenses, removing any doubt that their aim is not really to protect. The Institute for Justice, for instance, recently forced the Louisiana government to reconsider it’s outrageously arbitrary licensing regime for florists.
One man was thrown in jail simply for helping someone draft a letter in response to being fined. The cartel of lawyers doesn’t want people moving in on their turf who don’t charge $500 an hour.
Fully 30% of occupations require government licenses. Most of these professions provide no real risk to the consumer that due diligence could not protect them from. The U.S. Constitution protects the right of all to earn an honest living in the occupation of their choice, but these laws stand in the way of that fundamental right. It’s time for the government to get out of the business of licensing business.
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While the public is rightly skeptical of granting our government overlords unlimited power – which they are busy gathering for themselves nonetheless – there’s one group of people who think it would be just dandy to grant limitless power to the Political Class: the Political Class.
By a 54% to 43% margin, the Political Class believes the federal government should be allowed to do most anything. Mainstream voters reject that view by a 94% to three percent (3%) margin.
At a July 24 Town Hall meeting, Democratic Congressman Pete Stark of California may have inadvertently articulated the Political Class view. In responding to questions about whether or not the recently passed health care law is unconstitutional, Stark said, “I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life.” In response to a follow-up, he added, “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”
…The gap between the Political Class and Mainstream voters is seen in other data as well. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Political Class voters believe the United States is generally heading in the right direction. However, among Mainstream Voters, 84% say the country has gotten off on the wrong track.
The ruling elites are becoming increasingly out of touch from the rest of society. That their primary objective seems to be the acquisition and exercise of power is all the more reason not to entrust elites with any in the first place, especially over things as important as our retirement savings and health care.
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Ray D. Madoff writes in the LA Times that failing to confiscate the acquired wealth of individuals when they pass away will “harm our democracy.” She reaches this odd conclusion primarily by arguing that, absent an intrusive government willing to pick the pockets of the deceased, our democracy would be harmed by “concentrations of wealth.” She buttresses this argument with the factually incorrect claim that, while “few Americans own an enormous amount … a large number of Americans own hardly anything at all.”
This is simply untrue. Owning a small percentage of American wealth is not the same thing as owning hardly anything. Madoff ignores that owning a small, or even “unequal,” share of the American pie is still much better than having a large, “equal” or “fair” portion of almost any other, for the simple reason that America creates far more wealth to go around in the first place. This is because America has historically rewarded risk-taking and innovation, while other countries have been more concerned with Madoff’s brand of fairness. The consequence today is that even our poor are better off than the middle and upper classes of other countries. To understand the backwardness of her agenda, just look at the year she cites as the pinnacle of redistributive fairness, 1976, which was also the heyday of stagflation and malaise.
She also attempts to wave away concerns about double-taxation by arguing that “there is no general principle that says income or property gets taxed only once.” She supports this claim by saying that the same money is often taxed multiple times as it is earned, spent and passed along. But each of these activities is economic in nature and represents a separate action. Paying sales tax while spending the same money one has payed income tax on is not the same as having one’s estate pillaged by the state upon death. Death is not an economic activity.
Contrary to her claims, death taxes are harmful to the economy. They discourage savings and investment by encouraging people to spend money before it is taxed away, leading to job loss and slower economic growth. Death taxes also hit hard small, family businesses, or those with significant assets tied up in land, like farms. Would anyone expect major corporations to stay competitive if they had to liquidate and sell off half their assets every few generations?
Madoff’s biggest failure, however, is that she completely ignores the important role of the family unit in economic life. Households have always been recognized as an economic entity because of the manner in which families work together to advance their economic condition. To say that a parent has no right to pass on the fruits of their labor to their children and grandchildren is to completely ignore the unique role of the family in economic life. There’s no more moral justification for taxing estates after death than there is for taxing the allowance a parent might give to a child. Death and taxes are both be said to be inevitable, but there’s no reason they have to come together.
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The latest Center for Freedom and Prosperity video discuss the Rahn Curve, which asserts a Laffer Curve like relationship between the size of government and economic growth.
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Britain’s Conservative MP Daniel Hannan, made famous in America for the viral YouTube video of his fiscal takedown of Gordon Brown, recently wrote of his regret for supporting Barack Obama in the general election of the 2008 presidential campaign. A European politician’s opinion of America’s president really isn’t of any importance, but his chillingly accurate description of our path toward Europeanization ought to be of concern for all who believe in promoting freedom, limited government, and economic prosperity:
Leave a commentNone of these advantages, however, can make up for the single most important fact of Obama’s presidency, namely that the federal government is 30 per cent larger than it was two years ago
This is not entirely Obama’s fault, of course. The credit crunch occurred during the dying days of the Bush administration, and it was the 43rd president who began the baleful policy of bail-outs and pork-barrel stimulus packages. But it was Obama who massively extended that policy against united Republican opposition. It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who presumed to tell private sector employees what they could earn, he who adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.
These errors are not random. They amount to a comprehensive strategy of Europeanisation: Euro-carbon taxes, Euro-disarmament, Euro-healthcare, Euro-welfare, Euro-spending levels, Euro-tax levels and, inevitably, Euro-unemployment levels. Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I’m working in your future and, believe me, you won’t like it.
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Congressman Mike Conaway interrupts the usual Congressional Circus for some rare talk on political philosophy:
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
